Dismal Dean overdoes the cards but Dowie shuffles deck cannily

Relegation is no longer simply the fate of underperforming football teams, and nor does it take until May for it to be decided. Already this season three referees, Rob Styles, Peter Walton and Dermot Gallagher, have been banished from the Premiership for poor decision-making, and on Saturday Mike Dean posted his application to join them with a display of red-card-brandishing, penalty-awarding folly.

He was at least even-handed in his foolishness, each side finishing the game with 10 men and having conceded a penalty. But even the most generous of observers would struggle to see how Kevin Davies' attempt to win a second-half header constituted violent conduct, even if as he jumped his forearm did make some contact with Amady Faye. Nor that Faye's 57th-minute challenge on El Hadji Diouf, such as it was, took place inside Charlton's penalty area.

The first red card came with a little under half an hour played, Charlton's Hermann Hreidarsson sent off for using his elbow when challenging Davies for a high ball. The second penalty came when Tal Ben Haim gave Darren Bent's shirt the briefest and lightest of tugs and the Charlton forward tumbled. Although he, like Faye before him, was adjudged to have denied an opposing forward a goalscoring opportunity, both were shown a yellow card. Unlike Diouf a few minutes earlier, though, Bent scored from the resulting spot-kick.

"I thought the referee was waiting for something to happen so that he could even things up," said the Bolton captain, Kevin Nolan, who got booked for arguing with Dean about Davies' expulsion. "I'm disappointed that referees approach the game that way. That's what I told him and that's why I got booked. I'm upset with myself because, as captain, I shouldn't be getting booked for dissent. He sent Kevin off just to even things up. I think he did the same thing with the penalties."

Neither elbowing offence was comparable to that of Manchester City's Ben Thatcher on Portsmouth's Pedro Mendes last week, which was surely playing on the referee's mind as he made his decisions. "I broke my nose 15 times," said the Charlton manager Iain Dowie. "I guarantee that 10 or 12 were from elbows but only one or two were deliberate and I didn't think either was deliberate today. You have to be careful we don't sanitise the game."

"Players have to jump with their arm to get the elevation," said his opposite number, Sam Allardyce. "A player cannot keep his arms by his side. These clashes happen continuously throughout the Premiership. What referees have to understand is whether it's deliberate or not."

Dean's decisions clearly changed this game because Charlton were not in it until Hreidarsson's expulsion. Stelios Giannakopoulos had by that stage missed two wonderful chances but against disadvantaged opponents Bolton, the penalty excepted, could not muster another. "I, personally, am hurting," said Nolan. "I don't like losing games that we should have killed off in the first half. We've got to look at ourselves and see where we want this season to go." He will hope the arrival of Nicolas Anelka, who watched from the bench, will end such rank profligacy.

Scott Carson's save from Diouf's penalty was the game's pivotal moment, even if the England Under-21 goalkeeper did require some assistance. "Djimi Traoré knows him and he said, I think he could go to your right," said Carson. "It would have been difficult had that gone in." He also claimed something of an assist for Charlton's second after his long clearance was headed by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink into Bent's path for a prodded finish.

Dowie must take great credit for his tactical reorganisation. Having initially changed to 4-4-1 after Hreidarsson was sent off, he brought on Radostin Kishishev for Darren Ambrose within a few minutes, a move treated with dismay by the home fans, but playing 4-3-2 Charlton more than held their own.

"I've got no problem with their reaction," said Dowie. "They want to believe in their new manager - their last manager did great for them. They are waiting to get that belief. I've got to get some results." This one will help.